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Wind
Energy Facts
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Do
wind turbines
reduce our dependence on foreign oil?
Wind turbines produce electricity, not
gasoline or heating oil. In the U.S., oil (mostly in the form of the otherwise
unusable sludge left by gasoline refinement) is used to produce less than 2.5%
of our electricity. We export more than twice that amount. Our
electricity has nothing to do with our dependence on oil, either domestic or
foreign.
Do wind turbines reduce our use of coal, then,
or nuclear?
Burning coal provides more than half, atomic
fission more than a fifth, and burning natural gas about a sixth of our
electricity. All of these have serious environmental and geopolitical
shortcomings that we do indeed need to reduce.
Unfortunately, wind
turbines can't replace them -- or even reduce their use or slow their growth.
Because of the way the electric grid works, constantly matching supply
with demand to avoid dips and surges of power, the variable production of wind
turbines is treated as part of the demand side of the equation. A base level
of power is provided from large plants, and other plants are kept burning to
be able to provide the maximum likely power (peak load) needed as it varies
through the day. As demand drops, those plants are diverted from power
generation, and as demand rises they are brought back on to resume generating
the needed power. These plants burn fuel whether or not they are producing
electricity.
In other words, these peak load plants must continue
burning fuel when demand falls or wind production rises, because either trend
may reverse at any time. Because they are out of the control of the grid's
dispatchers, just like user demand, the wind turbines' only effect is to bring
the spinning standby plants in and out of production. But, again, the plants
continue to burn their fuel. And the additional fluctuations of wind power add
to the cost and inefficiency of that burning.
A further irony is that
because an increase in wind power capacity is seen on the grid as an increase
in demand fluctuation, it requires dedication of other grid capacity to cover
it. Rather than reduce, then, wind power may actually increase the use
of other fuels.
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